Celebrating? Or re-grouping?

Boots here. Taking a nice little breather from all of life’s various forms of coffee goodness and cabin door delights. I came across this picture tonight and was trying to remember what possessed me to take such an un-artful picture and whether the clues in this image scream happiness or stress, celebrating or re-grouping. The moment must have meant something to me, one way or another — otherwise I wouldn’t have felt inclined to capture it on film. The clues: a bottle of wine, a corkscrew, two wine glasses, some junk mail, a phone that has been turned off, some ripe bananas, a clean stovetop . . . Hmmmmm.

This past year has been full of change. Lots of moving from place to place and lots of moving pieces. For those of you move frequently, you can understand how life sometimes presents many choices — choices that beckon and ask to be your dance partner for the next tune. For those of you who haven’t moved for 15, 20, or more years, you might not be able to comprehend the impact of all the chaotic transition that moving creates. And I feel a goodly bit of envy for you. You know where you want to be and you have found it. This is a rare thing in life and you should feel proud that you have found a place to hang your hat and scrape your boots.

I’ve moved from unrefined one-room cabins to primitive wall tents to fixer-uppers to fancy beach houses . . . and back to rustic cabins. Cabins with rotting floors to houses with the finest hardwood flooring. No running water to three (count ’em!) full baths. Kerosene lamps to the latest and greatest in recessed lighting.

With so much moving, details get muted, memories get slopped together like a North Dakota funeral hotdish, and stuff remains unpacked. Boy, does it ever. Items that felt to be so important to you when you were carefully packing them into boxes become forgotten. Unnecessary. You learn to make do with what you have. You realize that one wooden spoon is enough. Three bath towels are plenty. You’ve moved so many times that when you are heading home from town you forget to turn left to your new abode and turn right instead toward your old home. Habits generate your direction. You realize that you have been operating on autopilot. A thought takes hold: Maybe that’s why I keep moving so often.

You start to associate seasons, sunsets, conditions, and wildlife with certain residences. The house with the Canada geese. The house with the beautiful birdies. The house with the deer. The house with the glorious sunsets. The house with the stinky water. The house with the ultra-quiet nights. The house with the flickering lights. The house with the orbs. The house with the scary bat. The house with the wet firewood. The house with all of the glorious sunlight. The house with the smoking stove. The house with the cranky water pump. The house with the insane squirrel that kept chewing through the screens.

I am going to make the assumption that this photo op was cause for celebration because I can’t fathom why I would want to visually record a time of stress and duress . . . unless, of course, I was celebrating that I had survived some such mishap . . . which I guess makes stress, ultimately and in the end, a cause for celebration.

Maybe there is some mysterious circuitousness in this image . . . reminding me that even the survival of mishaps deserves some homage. At the very least a celebration that calls for a bottle of wine and a toast for two. From where I (temporarily) sit now looking out over the Sound . . . with memories of past dwellings mingling and steeping in this little pot of Now . . . there is this message, sometimes extraordinarily subliminal, that pops into every image: Life Is Good.

And what would life be without a Stetson to hang on the back of the door and a good pair of boots to slip into each morning? Everyone loves a Stetson and I, in particular, love Ariat boots. Something about the fit and the cut that make my feet happy.

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